Self-help and inspirational audiobooks

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I have a question for you. Honey wanted maybe haven't been asked in a good while if at all what gifts were you born with that you are not choosing What are those things that you can say without a shadow of a doubt. I'm gifted in this area. This comes naturally for me. Some people are agreed that matt, others are agreed that teaching Children, some folks can sing the paint of the walls and others can draw anything with scary accuracy. So I asked you again, what gifts do you have? The Children are choosing? Listen, we were born with gifts, talents and abilities in order to use them not to let them stay dormant inside of us. Not to be silent about them, not to carry them right onto degree without doing a thing about them. There's an old adage that says the richest place in the world is the cemetery. Too many people live this world without ever letting their brilliance and creativity See the light of the don't you dare be one of them start using those gifts and watch your world start to change growing up. I had so many moments that really scared me when it came to recognizing the gifts I had and trying to figure out what to do with them my whole life. I've always been funny even as a child I knew I could make people laugh. I used to be the joke teller at all the cookouts. When I was a kid. I loved jokes and loved her so much. My daddy bought me my first joke book when I was interviewed agreed. oh God how I loved those books. I would read them all the time and even came up with my own jokes that I passed out on the family. I couldn't wait for the next big family gathering so I could share my latest jokes or performance. My family would laugh until they cried. Sometimes it made me feel so good to know I was giving them so much joy. I didn't realize that my sense of humor and timing were actual divine gifts until of course much later in life. But there was another gift, one that for a while there I wouldn't talk about. I was sure that people wouldn't understand it or they would be so frightened by it that they think I was crazy and stay away from me altogether. I have the gift of seeing and dreaming. Some folks back home call it second sight. I had many dreams as a child about various relatives or certain circumstances that felt like premonitions. One night when I was six or seven years old I had a dream that I was stuck in the automatic sliding doors at the grocery store. I saw myself, my arms and legs flailing trying to escape the opening and closing of the door on my body. When I woke up I told my mama and she comforted me later that week. I was with my neighbor when she stopped at the grocery store for a few things honey. No went behold the doors closed writing on me just like in my dream I dream about it and it had come to pass. It was so strange at first to continuously receive these visions. But then it just became my norm. I finally said to myself, oh wait, this is a gift I have. I dream things and they happen. It became a real thing for me. As I got older I would talk about my dreams often and my mama would have fear that she had always known. I had the gift. But this isn't something that's easy to share with people. There is this fear of people saying, oh she's crazy. If I were to always tell people what they saw about their lives. They probably slowly back away from me, their faces revealing their skepticism. But there also comes a point in your life and in order to be authentic, you have to embrace all of what makes you who you are as they came into adulthood, this gift of mine was something I couldn't ignore even when I desperately wanted to, I can control the visions or the dreams they just happen. My husband chance and I first moved to Los Angeles in 2004 and Honey, there wasn't a silver spoon in sight. We lived in an apartment complex in Baldwin Hills near Don Tomas drive that required us to take 51 stairs. Yes, I counted to our front door. We had a neighbor named Kim who seemed very sweet, although we didn't know her very well. She had the cutest baby boy named Devaughn and as time went on we did the difficult friendly neighbor thing we speak and say, hey, how are you when we passed each other but didn't get too involved in each other's lives. But there was something in my spirit that pressed me to try for more. I felt led to invite her over one day with another friend. Well, kim was there. She said, I have to go to this little birdie dinner later. Do you guys want to go with me? You can write with me. I said sure I haven't really been out in L. A. Yet. So I thought, oh this is, this will be interesting, a little fun, something to do. But as we were living, it happened, we were going down those forever stairs and kim was holding the von who was about one at the time as she placed him on her hip. I get a mental image of a coffin with a man on it. Somehow. I instantly knew that it was this little boy's father. I had no idea how I knew and I certainly didn't know where the image came from or why it came to me. But there it was as soon as I saw it, I thought, oh my God, his baby's father has passed away as kim was putting the ball into the car seat. she said, I need to take my son to my mom's house before we go. Her next words nearly knocked the breath out of me. It's been just so hard because his dad isn't with me. I lost his dad when I was pregnant. I almost passed out. Wait a minute. What just happened? I honestly didn't know what to say. There was no way I could admit. Yeah. I knew that she wouldn't have believed me anyway. But that experience was the beginning of me to really accepting that the gift was not only real, but something that would always be a part of my life. The dreams and visions I'd always had were undeniable. But again, how do you share something like that with someone? Well, maybe God is trying to teach me something here. I don't know. I thought that was an understatement.